The Last Days of Jesus Read online

  * * *

  Baptism in First-Century

  Jewish Culture

  The word baptize comes from an old Greek word, baptizein, which means “to dip.” Many religious traditions, some old and some new, use water to symbolize purity. In some, water is poured over a person’s head. In others, like the Jewish practice of the first century, a person was submerged, or dipped, in water.

  Baptism was a common practice in Judea and Galilee. Adults, not infants, were baptized. And they could be baptized as often as they had sins to confess. The Jews believed that when they were cleansed by water, they became pure and would be ready for their savior when he arrived. It was also essential to be pure when they took part in festival rituals. The mikvah pools outside Jerusalem in which pilgrims bathed served that purpose before Passover, Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.

  It wasn’t necessary that a particular person, such as a rabbi or a priest, perform the baptism. People could quietly name their sins and then wash in water. John the Baptist was thought to be especially close to God, and many people felt he could more effectively take away their sins.

  Site on the Jordan River where Jesus is said to have been baptized by John. [Library of Congress]

  * * *

  The end of the known world is coming, John preaches. A new king will arrive to stand in judgment. Wade into the water and be cleansed of your sins, or this newly anointed ruler—this “Christ”—will punish you in the most horrible manner possible. It is a message both religious and political, one that directly challenges the Roman Empire and the hierarchy of the Jewish temple.

  John extends an arm as the next pilgrim draws near to stand at his side in the river. He listens intently as the man confesses his many sins. Then John prays for him and says, “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

  John places one hand in the center of the man’s back and slowly guides him down into the water, holds him under for a few seconds, and then lifts the man back to his feet. The relieved pilgrim, his sins now forgiven, wades back to shore. Before he has even reached the bank, another believer is walking into the water to be cleansed.

  “Who are you?” demands a voice from the shore. John has been waiting for this question. Three groups of people are watching him. This question comes from a Pharisee, a temple high priest, sent from Jerusalem to judge whether or not John is committing heresy. The priest is not alone, having made the journey in the company of other Pharisees and Sadducees.

  “I am not the Christ,” John shouts back. The high priests know that he is referring to the person who will fulfill the prophecy—the new Jewish king, a man like Saul, David, and Solomon, the great rulers of generations past who were handpicked by God to lead the Israelites.

  “Then who are you?” demands another of the Pharisees. “Are you Elijah?”

  John has heard this comparison before. Like him, Elijah was a prophet who preached that the world would soon end.

  “No,” John replies firmly.

  “Who are you?” the priests demand once again. “Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us.”

  John speaks of a prediction made by the prophet Isaiah, a man who lived eight hundred years before. In this particular prediction, Isaiah had foretold that a man would come to tell the people about the day the world would end and God would appear on earth. This man would be “a voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for him.’”

  John truly believes that he is the man of whom Isaiah wrote, and he feels obligated to travel from city to city, telling one and all that the end of the world is near and that they must prepare by being baptized.

  “Who are you?” the priests demand once again, their voices angrier and more insistent.

  “I am the voice of one,” John responds, “calling in the wilderness.”

  * * *

  The temple priests are not the only officials keeping a close eye on John the Baptist. From his stunning new capital city of Tiberius, shrewdly named after the Roman emperor now in power, Herod Antipas, the tetrarch of Galilee, has sent spies to the Jordan River to track John’s every movement. The Baptist is the talk of Galilee, and Antipas fears that this charismatic evangelist will convince the people to rise up against him.

  Herod Antipas has spent a great deal of time in Rome, educating himself in Roman ways and customs and absorbing their fondness for literature, poetry, and music. The Jewish Antipas even dresses like Roman aristocracy, wearing the draped piece of cloth known as a toga, rather than the simple robes of the Jewish people.

  During his time in Rome, Antipas has learned to douse his food with fermented fish sauce, a pickled condiment with a strong taste that masks spoilage from lack of refrigeration. It is one of many Roman customs he has adopted.

  A Roman man wore a toga. Woodcut. [North Wind Picture Archives]

  Herod alienated the people of Galilee when he divorced his wife to marry the former wife of his half brother. His new wife, Herodias, knows that the Jews disapprove of her and her marriage. But Herod Antipas, now approaching fifty, understands that his first allegiance is to Emperor Tiberius. Even though Antipas has great power over the Jewish peasants, he must do as Rome tells him to do. He can never comment negatively on anything Tiberius does—even though the Jews are becoming more disenchanted every day with Roman rule. Fear of Tiberius also prevents Antipas from making any reforms that would help the Jewish people. Caught in the middle, he keeps his mouth shut and accumulates as much wealth as he can.

  Stone excavated from Caesarea that indicates that Pontius Pilate is dedicating a building to Caesar Augustus. [The Bridgeman Art Library]

  The third person tracking John is the new prefect, or governor, of Judea, the Roman Pontius Pilate. Pilate is a member of the equestrian class and a former soldier from central Italy, appointed to his post by the emperor. His chief function is to keep law and order in his land. He also collects taxes and sits in judgment of people accused of committing crimes.

  Pilate is married to Claudia Procula, who has accompanied him to Judea. It is a dismal appointment, for Judea is known to be a very difficult place to govern. But if her husband excels in this remote diplomatic posting, Claudia hopes that the powers in Rome might make his next assignment somewhere more prestigious.

  Pilate knows that his personal and professional future depend on making Tiberius happy. Despite his own pagan beliefs and lifestyle, Tiberius admires the Jews’ religious ways. He considers them the most devout subjects in the empire when it comes to keeping the Sabbath holy. Tiberius sends an order to Pontius Pilate instructing him to change nothing already sanctioned by custom, and to regard the Jews themselves, and their laws, as a sacred trust.

  According to Tiberius’s orders, Pilate is not to meddle in matters of Jewish law. He soon gets his first example of the powers of his subjects’ faith.

  One of Pilate’s first official acts is to order Roman troops in Jerusalem to decorate their banners with busts of Emperor Tiberius. When the people rise up to protest these graven images, which are forbidden by Jewish law, Pilate responds by having his soldiers surround the protesters and draw their swords as if to attack. The Jews refuse to back down. Instead, they bend forward and extend their necks, making it clear that they are prepared to die for their beliefs.

  Pilate orders his men to back away. The banners are removed.

  Pilate now finds a new strategy for dealing with the Jews, one honoring that “sacred trust.” He deliberately develops a strong bond with the high priest Caiaphas, the figurehead of the Jewish faith, the most powerful priest in the Jerusalem temple and the most influential man in the city. Caiaphas is from a family of priests and lives in a lavish home in the Upper City. He has complete power over religious life in Jerusalem, including the enforcement of Jewish law—even if that means suggesting a sentence that condem
ns a man or woman to death.

  Photograph of the remains of the house of Caiaphas, the high priest. [Corbis]

  Caiaphas controls the temple treasury, which holds untold riches. He controls the temple police force and all the other people who work there. And Caiaphas is the head of the Sanhedrin, the council of high priests who hear cases concerning religious law. But while Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin may oversee lesser sentences, it is the Roman governor who determines whether or not a death sentence should be carried out.

  Pilate is a Roman pagan. Caiaphas is a Jew. They worship differently, eat different foods, have different hopes for their future, and grew up speaking different tongues. Pilate serves at the behest of a divine emperor, while Caiaphas believes he serves at the behest of God. But they share a belief that they are entitled to do anything in order to stay in power.

  The Roman god Jupiter, god of the skies and the law. Hand-colored woodcut. [North Wind Picture Archives]

  In this way, state and faith keep a stranglehold on Judea. Caiaphas plays his role in this partnership, sending the team of religious authorities out into the wilderness to cast a critical eye on the ministry of John the Baptist.

  * * *

  The next day, John stands again in the Jordan River. As usual, the sun shines hot, and long lines of believers wait their turn to be baptized.

  In the distance, John sees a man walking down to the river. Like himself, this man has long hair and a beard. He wears sandals and a simple robe. His shoulders are broad, as if he is a workingman. He looks younger than John, but not by much. It is Jesus of Nazareth.

  As the crowd of pilgrims looks on, John motions toward Jesus. Jesus wades down into the water and takes his place alongside John, waiting to be baptized. When Jesus rises from being immersed in the water, a dove lands on his shoulder. Jesus makes no move to shoo it away—the bird is quite content to remain there.

  John says to the crowd, “Look, the Lamb of God. I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. And I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is God’s Chosen One.”

  The believers drop to their knees and press their faces to the earth.

  John is dumbstruck. “I need to be baptized by you, and yet you come to me?”

  * * *

  Temple Hierarchy

  Caiaphas, a member of the Sadducee sect, was the high priest at the time of Jesus. His father-in-law, Annas, had been high priest before him. Caiaphas controlled the massive temple treasury and all of the thousands of people who worked in the temple—the priests, the guards, the choirs and musicians, the teachers, and the many workers.

  The Sadducees were aristocratic priests, many from families of priests. They were less rigid in interpreting the law and more willing to live in harmony with the pagan Romans. The Sadducees were very involved with the rituals at the temple. They cared about appearance and were literal followers of the customs set down in the Torah.

  Pharisees were common people and were respected because they specialized in interpreting the oral laws God gave to Moses. The Mosaic Law and the Torah, the written Scripture, formed the basis of Jewish religious and legal custom. It was the Pharisees who interpreted Mosaic Law and wrote their ideas down in the Talmud. The Pharisees believed that a Messiah would come and bring with him an era of world peace. Nicodemus was a Pharisee.

  Members of both the Pharisees and the Sadducees made up the Sanhedrin, the seventy-one-member high court that was responsible for running the temple, collecting taxes, and interpreting religious and civil laws. But the Sanhedrin, of course, was not independent. Rome was always watching its actions and decisions.

  A high priest at the temple dressed for the Feast of Tabernacles. [Mary Evans Picture Library]

  * * *

  Jesus does not clarify his identity to the crowd. But speaking softly with John the Baptist, Jesus does declare who he is. Bowing his head to accept the water, he tells John, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.”

  John places one hand on Jesus’s back and slowly lowers him into the water. “I baptize you with water for repentance,” John says as he submerges Jesus in the current.

  He then lifts Jesus to his feet.

  “This is the Son of God,” John cries out.

  “Son of God” is a regal title indicative of the Messiah, a title attributed to King David. It is believed that when the Messiah returns, he will be king of the Jews, in keeping with David, the perfect king. The people now looking on understand “the Son of God” to mean the anointed one who is coming as ruler and king.

  The crowd remains on its knees as Jesus steps onto the shore and keeps on walking. He is headed alone into the desert to fast for forty days and nights. It is a journey he makes willingly, knowing that he must confront and defeat any and all temptation in order to make his mind and body pure before publicly preaching his message of faith and hope.

  John the Baptist’s work is now done. But his fate has been sealed.

  John is that rarest of all prophets—a man who lives to see his predictions come true. The people still desire to be cleansed of their sins through baptism, and huge crowds continue to trail John wherever he goes. If anything, his following is growing even larger. And while there is no longer a need to prophesy the coming of a new Christ, John has a powerful gift for speaking. He is not the sort to remain silent about immorality and injustice. So when John learns that Herod Antipas has divorced his wife and then violated Jewish law by taking his half brother’s former spouse for his new bride, he cannot remain silent. Walking the countryside, John the Baptist loudly denounces Antipas wherever he goes, turning the people against their ruler.

  Ruins of Machaerus, fortress of Herod the Great and, later, Antipas. [Corbis]

  Antipas orders the spies who have been keeping an eye on John to arrest him. John is chained, then marched fifteen miles through the hot desert. Finally, he sees a vision in front of him. It is Antipas’s mountaintop fortress at Machaerus. John is then forced to walk three thousand feet up to the citadel, which is surrounded on all sides by rocky ravines.

  The view from the palace, which lies in the center of the fortified structure, is stunning. If John were allowed to enjoy it, he might be able to see the slender brown curves of his beloved Jordan River snaking through the valley so far below. And perhaps John does pause for a final glimpse as he is marched through the great wooden doors that allow entrance to the citadel. But those doors close behind him all too quickly. Still in chains, he is marched into Antipas’s throne room, where he stands defiant and fearless before this man. And even when given a chance to recant his charges, John does not. “It is not lawful,” he tells the ruler, “for you to have your brother’s wife.”

  The woman in question, Herodias, sits at Antipas’s side. John is not only condemning her husband, but herself as well, but she sees that Antipas is actually fearful of John, and is afraid to order his death. Herodias, however, is a patient woman and knows that she will find a way to exact her revenge. How dare this unkempt savage insult her?

  And so it is that John is hurled into the dungeons of Machaerus, there to rot until Antipas sets him free—or Herodias has him killed.

  Meanwhile, a far greater threat to Antipas is beginning to emerge. Jesus of Nazareth has now embarked on a spiritual journey—a mission that will challenge the world’s most powerful men.

  CHAPTER 8

  TURNING OUT THE MONEYLENDERS

  APRIL, AD 27 JERUSALEM DAY

  Since his baptism and time spent fasting in the desert, Jesus’s ministry has been a quiet one. Today that will change.

  Jesus makes his way up the steps to the temple courts. Passover pilgrims surround him. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish believers have once again traveled a great distance—from Galilee, Syria, Egypt, and even Rome—to celebrate t
he climax to the Jewish year. Not that they have a choice: According to Jewish law, failure to visit the temple during Passover is one of thirty-six violations of Mosaic Law that will result in the holy punishment of karet—being spiritually cut off from God. Those who disobey will suffer a premature death or other punishment known only to the deity. So as he has done every spring since childhood, Jesus of Nazareth makes the trek to Jerusalem.

  The spiritual emotion that flows through the city is wondrous, as these many Jews come together to openly celebrate their faith and sing praises to God. Agents of the temple have repaired the dirt roads coming into town to make them smooth after the hard winter rains. Special pools, called mikvot, are dug so that the travelers can immerse themselves in the ritual bath, in order to be pure upon entering the holy city.

  After immersing himself in the mikvah, Jesus enters Jerusalem. Inside the city walls, he sees the hundreds of temporary clay ovens that have been constructed in order that each pilgrim will have a place to roast his Passover sacrifice before sitting down to the evening Seder feast. He hears the bleat of sheep as shepherds and their flocks clog the narrow streets. And Jesus can well imagine the peal of the silver trumpets and harmonious voices of the choir that will echo in the courts of the inner temple, just moments before a lamb is slaughtered for the Passover sacrifice. A priest will catch its blood in a gold bowl and then sprinkle it on the altar as the lamb is hung on a hook and skinned. The prayers of thanksgiving will soon follow, and the temple courts will echo with songs of hallelujah. The meat will be given to the family to cook for their Seder meal in one of the many communal ovens set up in the city. The skin of the animal was given to the priests.